Firecrawl vs Apify: one credit meter or a marketplace of scrapers?
Published prices compared, with the arithmetic shown. Last checked . Prices only: we have not tested reliability, speed or output quality.
At a glance
| Firecrawl | Apify | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | scraping apis | proxies and unblockers |
| Free tier | 1,000 credits/month, no card (about 1,000 pages or 500 searches), 2 concurrent requests. | $5 of prepaid usage per month, no credit card. |
| Entry paid price | from $19/mo | from $19/mo |
| MCP / agent support | Yes | Yes |
| Verification | full verification | partial verification |
| Official pricing page | Pricing (opens official site in a new tab) | Pricing (opens official site in a new tab) |
| Visit vendor | Try Firecrawl Sponsored / affiliate link (opens in a new tab) Firecrawl official site (plain link) (opens official site in a new tab) Affiliate link: FetchIndex may earn a commission. Disclosure | Official site (opens official site in a new tab) |
Analysis
This pairing is a good example of why a single price-per-page figure is sometimes impossible. Firecrawl is a single product with one credit meter. Apify is a marketplace of ready-made scrapers (“Actors”) whose authors set their own prices, on top of platform plans that include prepaid usage. Apify's own record says: Per-result prices are set per Actor (pay-per-event etc.). No honest platform-wide per-page figure; left null.
No shared per-request price to compare
These two vendors do not publish a price for the same kind of request in our data, so we do not invent a head-to-head number. Plans and billing units side by side:
| Vendor | Plan | Price | Included |
|---|---|---|---|
| Firecrawl | Free | free | 1,000 credits/mo |
| Firecrawl | Hobby | $19/mo | 5,000 credits/mo |
| Firecrawl | Standard | $83/mo billed annually | 100,000 credits/mo |
| Firecrawl | Growth | $333/mo billed annually | 500,000 credits/mo |
| Firecrawl | Scale | $599/mo billed annually | 1,000,000 credits/mo |
| Firecrawl | Enterprise | custom / not published | Custom |
| Apify | Free | free | $5 prepaid usage |
| Apify | Starter | $19/mo | $19 prepaid usage |
| Apify | Scale | $199/mo | $199 prepaid usage |
| Apify | Business | $999/mo | $999 prepaid usage |
| Apify | Enterprise | custom / not published | Custom |
Free tiers and how units are counted
- Firecrawl: 1,000 credits/month, no card (about 1,000 pages or 500 searches), 2 concurrent requests. Units: 1 credit = 1 page on basic scrape/crawl/map. Search = 2 credits / 10 results. Interact = 2 credits / browser minute. JSON, Question and Highlight formats add 4 credits per page. A 403/404 response that is returned still costs 1 credit; a scrape that returns no result is not charged.
- Apify: $5 of prepaid usage per month, no credit card. Units: Compute unit (CU) = 1 GB RAM for 1 hour. Store Actors use pay-per-event, pay-per-usage or hybrid pricing set by each Actor's author. Unused prepaid usage expires each billing cycle.
Firecrawl tends to fit
- RAG ingestion of whole sites
- Agents that need scrape + crawl + search from one balance
Watch-outs
- Credits are shared across endpoints, so JSON-format extraction (+4 credits) can quintuple the per-page cost.
- A returned 403/404 still costs 1 credit.
Apify tends to fit
- Pre-built scrapers for named sites (maps, social, e-commerce)
- Teams that want one invoice for scrapers + proxies + storage
Watch-outs
- Total cost = Actor price + compute + proxy; compare per-Actor, not per-plan.
- Unused prepaid credit expires monthly.
Budget view
| Use case | Monthly spend | Firecrawl | Apify |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic page fetch | up to $50/mo | $3.20 Hobby (annual) | none published |
| Basic page fetch | up to $100/mo | $0.83 Standard (annual) | none published |
| Basic page fetch | up to $500/mo | $0.666 Growth (annual) | none published |
| Basic page fetch | any budget | $0.599 Scale (annual) | none published |
Also see: alternatives to Firecrawl and alternatives to Apify. Run a small trial on your own target sites before committing: published price says nothing about success rate on hard sites.
Price ladders from the data
Effective price per unit at each published plan (monthly spend shown). Overage and assumption-based rows are excluded here; see each vendor page.
Basic page fetch
Firecrawl
- $3.20 Hobby (annual) · $16/mo
- $3.80 Hobby · $19/mo
- $0.83 Standard (annual) · $83/mo
- $0.666 Growth (annual) · $333/mo
- $0.599 Scale (annual) · $599/mo
Apify
none publishedWhat we could not verify
- Firecrawl: Stealth/enhanced proxy credit cost is not stated on the pricing page; not computed.; Monthly-billed prices not shown on the page (only annual-billed).
- Apify: Per-result prices are set per Actor (pay-per-event etc.). No honest platform-wide per-page figure; left null.